Tag Archives: Abu Mariyah al-Qahtani

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the restructured al-Qaeda branch in Syria, put out a statement today on the intra-insurgent clashes that began on 28 April in the besieged enclave of East Ghuta, the suburbs east of Damascus, between Jaysh al-Islam on one side and HTS and Faylaq al-Rahman on the other. An old al-Qaeda hand, Maysar al-Jiburi (Abu Mariya al-Qahtani), has already commented on this. Now HTS’s General Shari’a Council has released a statement “concerning the ongoing events in Eastern Ghuta”. The statement, translated by al-Maqalaat, is posted below. Continue reading →

In August 2015’s Perspectives on Terrorism, Truls Tønnessenwrites about the evolution of the leadership of what is now the Islamic State (I.S.) from its origins in al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) under the heading, “Heirs of Zarqawi or Saddam?” Tonnessen makes the obvious point that AQI’s leadership was largely comprised of foreign Salafi-jihadists with al-Qaeda histories, while I.S. is led by Iraqis, most of them former (Saddam) regime elements (FREs). But Tonnessen’s argument that I.S.’s leaders had not been AQI members is mistaken (they had), which erodes his arguments that AQI’s influence diminished over time as I.S. formed from various mergers, and that this diminution of influence came about because I.S.’s post-2010 leadership purged the veteran AQI elements within I.S. (I.S.’s leaders are veteran AQI elements.) The main difference between AQI’s leaders and I.S.’s is that AQI’s leaders had background connections to al-Qaeda Central (AQC) networks, and I.S.’s largely do not. While Tonnessen sees Jabhat an-Nusra as linked to these shifting dynamics, this argument does not stack up. Ultimately, Tonnessen’s contention that I.S.’s leaders are more heirs of Saddam than Zarqawi fails in the terms Tonnessen presents it. Continue reading →

Saddam Hussein created the Fedayeen Saddam in 1994 as a paramilitary Praetorian unit. The Fedayeen were initially charged with protecting the regime from a repeat of the revolts that followed Saddam’s eviction from Kuwait by acting as a pre-emptive counter-insurgency force. Over time this internal security mission became increasingly about enforcing the Islamic law. Saddam had begun Islamizing his regime in the late 1980s, and intensified this in the early 1990s, attempting to create a synthesis of Ba’athism and Salafism to buttress his legitimacy. Saddam had begun Islamizing his foreign policy as early as 1982-83, making alliances with all manner of Islamist terrorists, thousands of whom came to Iraq for training in the 1990s, where they attended camps run by the Fedayeen. In the Fedayeen—connected to the global Islamist terrorist movement, combining elements of Ba’athism with an increasingly-stern Salafism—is a microcosm of the Saddam regime’s mutation into the Islamic State (ISIS). Continue reading →

Al-Qaeda broke relations with the then-Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in February. In June, ISIS declared that it had restored the caliphate and changed its name to simply the Islamic State (IS). Since then, some jihadist groups, including some affiliated with al-Qaeda, have declared their allegiance to IS. With the beginning of American airstrikes against IS, in Iraq on 7 August and extended to Syria on 23 September, the question of where jihadi-salafists stand with regard to IS has become more acute. It was in this predicament that a statement was released today from a leader of al-Qaeda in Syria condemning al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen for its statement of solidarity with IS in the face of these U.S.-led attacks. By the lights of al-Qaeda in Syria, the Yemeni branch’s statement was too lenient toward IS and will be misinterpreted as support for an organization that has struck down senior officials of al-Qaeda in Syria and remains actively at war with al-Qaeda in that theatre to this hour. Continue reading →

A purported defector from the Islamic State, known only as “Abu Ahmad,” released testimony online on 5 April 2014 via the Syrian opposition news site al-Durar al-Shamiya under the heading, “The Concealed Truths About al-Baghdadi’s State”. Abu Ahmad describes himself as “one of the mujahideen in Khorasan [Afghanistan-Pakistan] and Iraq, and now in al-Sham [Syria],” and it is quite clear that Abu Ahmad has defected to al-Qaeda. On 25 September 2014, an English version of this testimony was posted on the Fund for Fallen Allies website. It has been reposted below—with some editions to transliteration and syntax—to avoid it being lost.Continue reading →